As of: March 28, 2024, 6:00 p.m
By: Christoph Peters
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Local partner: Electrician Wilhelm Schmid and his Böbinger specialist company take care of the electricity network of the Electricity Association. © Hans-Helmut Herold
Over 100 years ago, the Böbing Electricity Association brought electricity to the village. The local low-voltage network is still in the hands of the cooperative today. Many Böbingers are loyal customers, but precisely because of the energy transition, the region's smallest network operator is worried about the future.
Böbing
– It must have been an uplifting feeling on December 21, 1921, when electric lights burned for the first time in Böbing shortly before Christmas. What is taken for granted today was ultimately a minor sensation at the time. The electricity came from the Peißenberg mine. In the previous months, the Böbingers had laid a line away from the substructure and built a transformer station. It was, so to speak, the birth of the Böbing Electricity Association.
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While more than 100 years later, the big players in the energy industry have long since taken over the power grids elsewhere, it still ensures a secure power supply in almost the entire municipality as an independent energy distributor with its own low-voltage network. Only the municipalities Listlehof, Bruckerhof, Granerhof, Bruckerwörth and Ammertal are not included.
Like the little Gallic village. . .
“We’re a bit like a little Gallic village,” says Mayor Peter Erhard and laughs. “We always had board members who wanted to continue.” Only in the 1980s and 1990s was there a difficult phase when a sale was on the cards, Erhard remembers. But the association, which the Electricity Association was still called at the time, was bottoming out. In 2008 it was converted into a registered cooperative. It currently has 358 members, the majority of whom come from Böbing.
The cooperative not only takes care of the operation of its own low-voltage network, which includes a total of 48 kilometers of cable and five kilometers of overhead line, but also acts as a metering point operator for 900 consumption meters and as an electricity provider. The team that manages all of this is quite manageable. Andrea Leyerer takes care of the commercial processing of the business, electrician Wilhelm Schmid and his local specialist company are responsible for the technical side. There is also a five-member executive board and a supervisory board, which consists of three members.
But it doesn't work without outside help
The fact that all contacts are on site is also the biggest advantage that the Electricity Association brings to its customers. “We can react much faster than a large corporation,” says Erhard. In addition, jobs are secured in the village and the trade tax also remains in the village. But it's no longer possible without outside help. The processing of electricity purchases, for example, can no longer be managed alone, says Leyerer. As early as 2008, they joined forces with other small network operators to form a purchasing association, which always procures the required electricity from the exchange in the previous year.
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That worked well - until Russia invaded Ukraine and energy prices shot up to dizzying heights from one day to the next. In the following months, people sometimes paid 1.50 euros per kilowatt hour, says Leyerer. If the government had not capped the price of electricity, they would have had to charge 63 cents per kWh and would have lost many customers. But there was no big wave of layoffs, and the majority of Böbingers remained loyal to the cooperative. “The electricity price cap saved us.”
“We are not systemically relevant”
But it's not just such imponderables that are making life increasingly difficult for the small network operator from Böbing. Erhard complains that the regulatory requirements are constantly increasing. “When it comes to legislation, little ones like us are not taken into account. We are not systemically relevant.” Whether it’s a digital network operator portal, smart meter installation, dynamic electricity prices or the dimming of heat pumps and wall boxes to protect the power grid from overload: “We have to implement all of this just like the big providers,” says Leyerer.
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The energy transition is causing problems for the cooperative in other ways. There are now 190 photovoltaic systems in Böbing, they deliver an output of 3,440 kilowatts. Actually a good thing, says the managing director. But because more and more Böbingers are using the electricity they generate themselves, the purchase is falling, which means that the costs of operating and expanding their own network as well as the financial outlay for the upstream Bayernwerke network have to be spread over ever smaller quantities. The PV electricity fed back, which amounted to 1.6 million kilowatt hours in 2023, also has a negative impact on the balance sheet.
The result is high network fees
The result of all this: “We now have incredibly high network fees,” says Leyerer. As a result of developments, correctly calculating electricity purchases is becoming more and more of a lottery game. “We are fully behind the energy transition, but it doesn’t work with the old parameters.” A reform of network fees is urgently needed.
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And so the Böbing Electricity Association looks to the future with some concern. Of course, one asks oneself what will happen next given the rapid development, says Erhard. “We are facing an incredible challenge. Of course nothing is taken for granted anymore.”